However, a top health expert from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Delhi ruled this out as the fourth wave of Covid-19.
India has been recording significantly high number of Covid cases in the past few weeks.
On Thursday, the Centre wrote a letter to all the states reporting the most number of cases like Maharashtra and Kerala among others. 81% cases have been reported from Maharashtra, Kerala, Delhi and Karnataka (in descending order of number of new cases reported).
The Centre on Thursday wrote to all states and union territories regarding the ‘upsurge’ in new Covid-19 cases in the past two weeks, adding that high-level testing must be conducted in areas that are reporting new or clusters of cases, according to people familiar with the matter.
Samiran Panda, the Additional Director general of the ICMR on Friday told news agency ANI, the situation coulkd still not e called a fourth wave of coronavirus in the country.
“It's wrong to say 4th wave is coming, we need to examine district-level data. High number of cases in few districts can't be considered as unifrom increase in cases across country. Not every variant is variant of concern," Panda said to ANI.
He stressed on the fact that district level data needs to be collated in order to understand the current situation regarding the pandemic in the country.
Panda further stated that high number of cases in a few districts could not be attributed to the whole country. It could not be state das a uniform increase in cases across the country.
the high number of daily new Covid cases is mainly being driven by a few states like Maharashtra, Karnataka.
Panda also said that not every variant is a variant of concern. This comes at a time, when India has confirmed the presence of the Omicron sub-variants Ba.4 and Ba.5 in India.
As many as 12 people have been found to be infected with Omicron BA4 and BA5 variants in Tamil Nadu and with that at least, 4 subvariants are circulating in the state.
The Centre on Thursday informed the states reporting an upsurge in covid cases to follow the ‘five-fold strategy’.
Bhushan underlined specific strategic areas of intervention for states/UTs like testing and surveillance, clinical management, vaccination, Covid appropriate behaviour and community engagement with an increased focus on evidence-based decision-making.
The health secretary also advised the states and Union territories (UTs) to monitor average daily testing per million as well as share of RT-PCR in total tests conducted.
"This will enable states/UTs to take timely pre-emptive action wherever required," the letter stated.
States/UTs must also enhance monitoring of Influenza like Illness (ILI) and SARI cases in all health facilities on a regular basis for detecting early warning signals of the spread of infection, he stressed.
Genome sequencing of prescribed samples of international passengers as well as collection of samples from sentinel sites (identified health facilities) and local cluster of new Covid-19 cases is equally important.
Such samples must be sent promptly by state/UTs to designated lab of INSACOG network for genome sequencing, Bhushan underlined.
